A Deerhound
Deerhounds were bred to hunt deer by running them down, a method known as coursing or deer stalking. In this study, Landseer sympathetically evoked his subject’s vivacity and poise. The dog appears in a similar pose, nuzzling under the hand of its master, the Duke of Gordon, in Landseer’s Scene in the Scottish Highlands (ca. 1825–28; private collection). The painting was one of the artist’s first aristocratic hunting portraits, and it bolstered his meteoric rise as Britain’s premier painter of animal and sporting pictures.
Artwork Details
- Title: A Deerhound
- Artist: Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (British, London 1802–1873 London)
- Date: 1826
- Medium: Oil on board
- Dimensions: 12 1/16 × 16 1/16 in. (30.6 × 40.8 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust, 2018
- Object Number: 2018.289.4
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings
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